Ineffable Connectedness

Blogger Dick Richards is musing on Jung's concept of synchronicity in his latest blog post about parrots and pirates.

He says: "“Temporally coincident occurrences of acausal events.” That barely comprehensible phrase is how Carl Jung once described what he called “synchronicity.” Fortunately, it isn’t all that hard to understand: improbable events happen that did not cause one another, and that seem connected in some way that appears to mean something that isn’t immediately obvious."

I've always liked that concept, and have experienced the feeling that Dick is writing about, that recent events seem connected.

For me this past week, it was Hair and Greeks. Hair, the landmark Broadway show about the Sixties. And Greeks as in people from Greece. Suffice to say, that within a two to three day period, I kept encountering both.

Why? There is sometimes an ineffable connectedness in life.

You notice it, but you can't explain it.

You wonder if the universe is trying to tell you something, but you don't get it.

Looked at poetically, or like analysis of dreams, one could say that the message in Hair is about letting go and freeing oneself from societal convention. And perhaps the message in Greeks is a zest for living, as in Zorba the Greek whose lusty exuberance taught that the aim of a man's life is to create joy, set free the spirit, and spread happiness.

A frazzled cowboy once said, "I'm so busy, I don't know if I found a rope or lost my horse."
Clearly that dazed and confused cowboy is trying to make sense out his situation.
How often, in your life, can you relate to that?
Organizational psychologist Karl Weick wrote some very interesting stuff about human behavior and organization. In one piece, he wrote about a team of smoke-jumpers who were dropped by parachute into a major forest fire. Though highly trained, some things happened that they were unprepared for. As a result, they became disorganized and sadly most of them died.
What happened? Weick wondered if there was a failure of sensemaking. Sensemaking is the process by which people give meaning to what they are experiencing.
Weick's concept of "sensemaking" refers to the mental process of interpreting and constructing the reality we find ourselves in. So defined, we are sensemaking pretty much all the time as we go about our daily lives. Most of…

Serving customers is one of the most challenging jobs out there. You need to be a good listener, an effective communicator, a calm conflict mediator, and an analytical problem solver all rolled into one. You must be very organized and have infinite patience. Plus you need to wear a sunny disposition even on days when you don't feel like it.

Many have endeavored to capture the key ingredients in customer service, so I have decided to throw my hat into the ring as well.

I call my approach Customer Service With HEART:

H = Help and Hear - You are there to Help the customer. Plain and simple. And the first (and most important) thing you do is listen. Hear the customer fully before responding. This may be the toughest part of listening. We have to make the choice to listen, especially when we are busy, preoccupied, stressed, and distracted. When you focus on the Other, pay attention to What is being said, as well as What is not being said. This includes the non-verbal signs the person i…